The Dwelling House

By George Vivian Poore

"The Dwelling House" is the work of physician George V. Poore on the state of sanitation in English homes in the late nineteenth century. The book is intended not merely to point out certain common defects in the Dwelling House, and to show how evils more or less necessary in towns may be avoided in the country, but to call attention to the fact that the then modern methods of sanitation, and the heavy taxation of the dwelling, had inevitably increased overcrowding, and the moral and physical ills which follow in its train. An attempt is made to review the great subject of the disposal of house refuse in its political and scientific aspects, rather than from the point of view of the tradesmen involved in the industry.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Good Press
• Release date: Dec 20, 2019
• ISBN: 4064066138318

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George Vivian Poore

The Dwelling House

Published by Good Press, 2022

[e-mail]

EAN 4064066138318

Table of Contents

PREFACE

CHAPTER I DEFECTS IN PLANNING

The Typical London House

Ventilation of Corridors

Aspect

Warming

Living-rooms

Hotel Bedrooms

Putrescible Fluids

Damp Houses

Larders

CHAPTER II THE SANITATION OF THE ISOLATED DWELLING

Dry Methods

Humification

Actual Practice

The 'Dry Catch'

The 'Pail' System

In-Door Earth Closet.

Dry Method of Treating Urine

Housing of Animals

Construction of Wells

CHAPTER III SLOP-WATER

Principles of Slop-Drainage

Filtration Gutters

Rain-Water.

Refuse.

CHAPTER IV OVERCROWDING, ITS CAUSES AND EFFECTS

The Strand

Building Regulations

'Model' (!) By-laws

The Cost of the Dwelling

Remedies for Overcrowding

CHAPTER V THE CIRCULATION OF ORGANIC MATTER

CHAPTER VI THE SOIL IN ITS RELATION TO DISEASE AND SANITATION

INDEX

PREFACE

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decoration

This work is intended not merely to point out certain common defects in the Dwelling House, and to show how evils more or less necessary in towns may be avoided in the country, but to call attention to the fact that our modern methods of sanitation, and the heavy taxation of the dwelling, inevitably increase overcrowding, and the moral and physical ills which follow in its train.

An attempt is made to review the great subject of the disposal of house refuse in its political and scientific aspects, rather than from the point of view of the tradesman or patentee.

The greater part of the ensuing chapters has been previously published. Addresses delivered before the Royal Institution of Great Britain, the London Institution, the Sanitary Institute, and the Medico-Chirurgical Society of Nottingham, together with short papers communicated to the British Medical Association, the British Institute of Public Health, and the 'Practitioner,' have been incorporated with the text.

The author is greatly indebted to his friend, Mr. Thomas W. Cutler, F.R.I.B.A., for much valuable advice and assistance in the preparation of some of the illustrations; and he is similarly indebted to Mr. Arthur Blomfield-Jackson and the editors of the 'Lancet' and 'Practitioner.'

For permission to use the diagram illustrating the Model By-Laws of the Local Government Board (p. 109) the thanks of the author are due to Messrs. Knight & Co.

From Mr. George Pernet, B.A., M.R.C.S. &c., the author has received much assistance and many valuable suggestions during the passage of the work through the press.

32 Wimpole Street

,

July 1897

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CHAPTER I

DEFECTS IN PLANNING

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It is doubtful if there be anything which more affects the health of the individual than the house in which he lives.

Modern advances in bacteriology, and the certain knowledge of the way in which many diseases are carried through the air, have given additional importance to methods of house construction. The danger, for persons who are not immune, of being under the same roof with a case of whooping cough, measles, scarlatina, diphtheria, typhus, or smallpox has long been recognised; but it is only recently that our eyes have been opened as to similar dangers in relation to tuberculosis and pneumonia. Pneumonia has now for some years been occasionally spoken of as a 'house disease,' and the same term has recently—but whether on sufficient evidence is doubtful—been applied to cancer.

A careful study of the epidemic of influenza, which is showing singular vigour in the seventh year of its reappearance amongst us, has clearly shown that it is communicable through the air. And the way in which whole households go down with it when once it gains a footing in a house, is an additional reason for reconsidering our methods of house-construction.

The main object to be kept in view in building a house is the supply of fresh air. Too much care cannot be taken to insure that all the channels of internal communication—hall, passages, staircases—have independent ventilation of their own. Unless there be the means of getting these internal channels blown out by through draughts, the house cannot be wholesome; and in the event of any of the air-borne contagia getting a footing in the house, the liability to spread is enormously increased.

Not only must these internal channels have air, but they must have light also. The dark passage, ending in a close cul-de-sac of bedroom doors, is one of the commonest features of the modern house, and is, of course, absolutely to be condemned.

When we encounter the smell of the kitchen in the corridors, this may be taken as sure evidence that the house is unwholesome, and that the internal channels of communication are as insufficiently ventilated as is the kitchen. The smell of fried bacon which oozes through the keyhole of your bedroom may be accompanied by all the infective potentialities of all the inmates of the house. This test, as applied to corridors, is analogous to the smoke test or oil of peppermint test as applied to drains, and is quite as important.

If the house be of several storeys, the ventilation of the staircase has an importance which bears a direct proportion to the height of the house. As a rule, in second-class, and, indeed, in many first-class houses, the ventilation and illumination of the staircase never trouble the mind of the builder or his architect. Starting from the front passage, the only light of which is from a closed fan-light over the door, the staircase oscillates between water-closet doors and bedroom doors, getting darker and darker as it ascends. In the houses of artizans, every doctor must be familiar with the rancid whiff that comes up the absolutely dark stairs leading to the basement; the cold, damp smell of mildew and soot in the sacred front parlour, where the 'register' is closed and the blinds are drawn; and the variety of odours which assault his nose until he arrives at the carbolic sheet protecting the door of the room containing the case of infectious illness he has possibly come to see. Such houses are almost always let in lodgings, and contain several families; and if air-borne contagia ever gain admission to them, it can be no matter for surprise that they are difficult to dislodge.

The same defect of construction is seen in a very large number of London houses, even the smartest. The defect may be shortly spoken of as this:—'that the internal channels of communication, instead of serving for the supply of fresh air, merely facilitate the exchange of foul air.' This defect of construction is dangerous in proportion to the size of the building and the number of persons it contains.

The shafts for lifts necessarily require independent ventilation as much as the staircases. The monster hotels or towers of flats, from inattention to these details, are liable to be most unwholesome residences, and to be really dangerous if air-borne contagia gain access to them.

The Typical London House

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Let us look at the ordinary London house of the better class. I have borrowed the plans which were given in the 'Lancet' for July 4, 1896. Figs. 1 and 2 show the plans of all the floors of the same house before (1) and after (2) certain alterations in the plumbing arrangements. Fig. 3 is a section of the same house, kindly made for me by Mr. Thomas W. Cutler, F.R.I.B.A.

I have taken these plans for the sake of showing what are the common defects of the average better-class London house.

Fig. 1.

Fig. 2.

Typical London House.

I do not wish to be understood as saying that these defects are, in London at least, remediable. That unfortunately is not the case. That they are defects which ought to be avoided in places where land is less costly than in London is very evident.

Fig. 3. Typical London House

Fig. 3.—Typical London House.

1. The main defect is due to the fact that the cubic capacity of the house is far too great for the area upon which it is built. The house is, in fact, a tower of five storeys, 60 feet high from basement to roof, and containing 37,000 cubic feet, standing on an area of 1,512 square feet. A house of this shape entails enormous labour upon servants. It has been said, that in raising the body vertically we do an amount of work equal to moving the body twenty times the distance horizontally. The climb from basement to the top storey is therefore equal to walking 1,000 or 1,200 feet along the level, and when a footman weighing 11 stone, and carrying 28 pounds weight of coals, climbs from the coal-cellar to one of the top rooms, the work done is rather more than four foot-tons. I do not know when high-service water supplies became general in London houses, but it is evident that when the only water-supply was in the basement, the inconvenience of these high houses must have been very great. Gas-pipes, hydraulic lifts, electric wires, speaking-tubes, and high water supply have so lessened the personal service required in these domestic towers, that they have become popular, and by increasing the overcrowding in our cities they now constitute a very serious sanitary danger. In America the houses with steel frames have been run up to a height of 250 feet and over, and have converted the streets into sunless, draughty cañons, in which locomotion is a matter of great difficulty, because the width of the street bears no due proportion to the cubic contents (and population) of the houses flanking it.

2. The house being flanked on either side by other houses, the front and back walls are alone available for admitting light and air, and the depth of the house is unduly great in proportion to its width. The noise of the neighbours is not always a trivial drawback.

3. One storey, and the largest, is below the street level, an arrangement which, from a sanitary point of view, is unjustifiable, and ought never to be imitated in the country.

4. There is no back door, which is a very serious defect in a house. The result is that the coals have to be got in, and the ashes and garbage to be got out, under the dining-room windows, and that while these tedious processes are in doing the traffic in the main street is very much impeded.

It is said that eels get used to skinning, and so the Londoner becomes very blind to the failings of the house which he inhabits.

The house of which the plan and sections are shown in the figures is not, be it observed, one of the dwellings of the poor, of which we hear so much, but one of the dwellings of the well-to-do, or even rich, fetching probably 350l. a year rent. It would need four servants, one of whom would sleep below ground level in the pantry; and in addition to the servants, eight persons might squeeze into such a house.

The basement below ground level is really a cellar dwelling, against which we inveigh, when we find it in Whitechapel. It is very dark, and requires artificial light nearly every day in the year. A butler sleeps in a dingy 'pantry' among the tea-cups and other gear, which he possibly sorts upon his unmade bed before he lays the cloth for breakfast.

This basement (Fig. 2) contains four sinks and two closets, each with its trap, and in each of the three areas are trapped gullies so placed that any gases which escape from them are more likely than not to find their way into the house.

The only way into the kitchen is through the scullery. The scullery sink is turned away from the window, and the smell of cooking and of cabbage water must inevitably find its way into the basement. A water-closet has been wedged into the back area between the windows of the kitchen and the servants' hall; and the larder, while it is without adequate light or ventilation, has a trapped gully at its door to serve as a seed-bed for mould fungi which will infect the food.

There is only one staircase, and this must serve as a shaft for the culinary and other fumes of the basement to rise in. It is entirely without independent ventilation until the half-landing above the drawing-room is reached. In fig. 1 there is another staircase window on the second floor, but this, be it observed, has been blocked by a water-closet in the house, as altered by the plumbers. This is a very serious thing to have done, and, in my judgment, is not in any way compensated by the changes recommended. The staircase has a skylight at the top, but skylights, being never opened in London because of 'the blacks,' are of very little use for ventilation. On the ground floor a water-closet abuts on the morning-room windows, while in the area beneath these windows is another water-closet, previously mentioned.

The first floor contains two fine drawing-rooms and a staircase window, and being without 'sanitary apparatus' is wholesome, except for the fumes which may ascend or descend the well-staircase. On this floor the light and decoration will render one oblivious of the basement. On the second floor the staircase window has been blocked, and there is an impossible bath-room, without adequate light or ventilation, which nothing can make wholesome, and which ought to be abolished absolutely. On the top floor the staircase ends in an unventilated cul-de-sac formed by four bedrooms, a dark 'box-room,' and a water-closet which is wedged in between two bedrooms.

This house has, if one may say so, been over-plumbered. There are five closets, five sinks, and a bath-waste (eleven trapped waste-pipes) for a maximum of twelve people. The closet on the second floor, and the one in the basement between the servants' hall and kitchen, should be abolished, and the fixed bath on the second floor should be removed. A bath-room wants light and air, and should always be against an outside wall. Persons should never take houses with extemporised bath-rooms poked in 'anywhere.'

In order to be fairly wholesome this house wants a fan-light over, or a glazed panel in, the front door, to serve the purpose of a window and ventilator, and a window over the

W.C.

between morning-room and study. In this way there will be the possibility of a through draught at the foot of the stairs. The staircase window on the second floor should be re-opened, and a window put above the

W.C.

on the top floor (the

W.C.

need not be more than 7 feet 6 inches in height). In this way the main channel of internal communication will be ventilated, and should any of the sanitary fittings 'go wrong,' the emanations will be diluted, perhaps to safety point.

Now we may assume that the house we have been considering, with three rooms on the ground floor, would let for about 350l. per annum, and would be rated at 300l. The